VineyardsSolar canopies over the vines
Bifacial panels protect vines from hail and excess sun, while feeding the winery. The harvest improves; the energy bill disappears.
Solar, made for the Shires
Local solar electricity installation.
Global quality.
We design and install solar systems that disappear into the British landscape — and outperform every panel on your neighbour's roof.
12+ yr
Engineering
800+
UK installs
25 yr
Warranty
Fits the landscape, beats the grid
Roof, pergola, ground or barn — we design around what's already there.
Customer paradigms
Solar that earns its place on the land.
Our favourite installations don't just sit on a roof — they double up as shelter, structure and shade. The land keeps producing. Now it produces electricity too.
Vineyards
Market gardensAgrivoltaics for growers
Pergola arrays shade tender crops, conserve water, and turn an acre of veg into an acre of veg plus 80 MWh a year.
The problem
Most solar installs are quietly mediocre.
The technology is extraordinary. The industry around it is, too often, not. Here's what we see on every survey of someone else's work.
01
Cheapest-bid panels
Most installers chase price, not yield. The same panel under a British sky for 25 years is the wrong place to save £200.
02
Roof-only thinking
Pitched roofs aren't always the best surface. Pergolas, barns, and ground arrays often produce more, more reliably.
03
Eyesore inverters
Plastic boxes bolted to brick, cables stapled across stonework. We've spent a decade undoing other people's work.
04
No one comes back
Installed and abandoned. Performance drifts 1–2% a year and nobody notices until the bill arrives.
Why Shires
Built like the buildings we install on.
We started Shires Energy after a decade of installing solar in places that mattered — listed buildings, vineyards, conservation areas. The standards stuck.
Tier-1 panels only
We use the same panels powering utility-scale farms in Spain and Australia. No grey-market kit.
Designed for your land
An architect-led survey before a single bracket is ordered. The system fits the place, not the other way round.
Discreet hardware
Black-on-black panels, hidden cabling, recessed inverters. You see the landscape, not the lattice.
We come back
Annual performance audits for the life of the system. We replace anything that drifts more than 2%.
The big number
The UK could power itself on solar. We'd only need to cover one per cent of the land.
Not on virgin countryside. On the rooftops, barns, car parks and pergolas already there. We wrote the long version — read it, then book a survey.
1%
of the UK